


progress, of a sort

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Introspection, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship, Survivor Guilt, Trust Issues, Virmire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-25 15:42:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10767321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: The trouble with barriers was they were supposed to decay with time. Every biotic knew that. And yet this one stayed firmly in place, wedged between himself and Shepard since Horizon, maybe even before that. And Kaidan didn’t know how to pull it down. Every time he tried, every olive branch he extended, just got torn back when Kaidan found another way to question Shepard’s ethics, his morals, his every decision, a habit he couldn’t drop no matter how much he wanted to—and he did, more than anything. How could a person trust anything from either side of the microscope from which Kaidan had been inspecting Shepard’s every action?





	progress, of a sort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_Katana4544](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Katana4544/gifts).



It’d been three years and Kaidan still didn’t have an answer to the one question that mattered, the one question that had gotten under his skin and lodged itself there like another implant. It had grown into a brittle, protective layer that somehow remained impervious to everything. So far—all these years on—and he still hadn’t broken through it.. No matter what he did or where he went or how many things he saw, it never went away.

Virmire. Ashley. Why Shepard chose him over her. The question gnawed at him when he let it—better that, he supposed, than think about the _other_ things that gnawed at him, things that were closer, a more immediate danger—and right now…

Right now, it was easy to let it. Bad days always were.

With this much practice, he should’ve been better at handling it.

But he wasn’t.

“Something on your mind, Kaidan?” Shepard said, approaching from across the mess and still somehow surprising Kaidan with his arrival. Kaidan might not have flinched, but his heart battered itself against his sternum. He felt cold all over for a moment, frozen in place, before the heat of embarrassment cracked through the icy realization that he’d been caught out.

There were two mugs in Shepard’s clean, capable, scarred hands and his fingers were curled awkwardly around the handle of the one he placed in front of Kaidan. Steam curled toward the ceiling in playful twists from inside the mug. As Kaidan reached for it, Shepard intercepted him, dropping a pair of pills into his palm. Looking down at them, a bitter smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “That obvious, huh?”

He’d been trying to ignore the dull throbbing behind his eyes, the results of a normal headache rather than the migraines that occasionally plagued him. Somehow, it seemed silly to take anything for something so minuscule. But now that the gift of pain relief had been dropped into his hand, it seemed equally silly to refuse it.

Settling on the bench across from him, Shepard shrugged and peered down at the dark, glossy surface of his cup of coffee. “Yeah,” he answered, like he was hedging or waiting for a blow. And maybe he was right to feel that way. “That obvious.” It seemed every time they talked, Kaidan found some way to get in a shot of one sort or another. Then Shepard lifted his eyes and for a moment, it was almost like the times before Virmire. Enough so that it made Kaidan’s insides ache, his chest squeezing like a vice around his lungs.

Nostalgia was a hell of a thing.

Swallowing back the pills, Kaidan downed them with the coffee Shepard had brought him. The drink was just shy of too hot, uncomfortably so, but Kaidan prevailed. “Thanks, Shepard.”

A slight—very slight—smile dimpled Shepard’s cheek, but like most things, it was transient, ephemeral, fading almost immediately and leaving no trace of itself behind. Kaidan regretted that, wished he had the key to unlocking a longer, larger expression of pleasure, but he wasn’t Garrus, the only one of them who’d been there from the start, who’d dropped everything when Shepard came calling, when Shepard needed them all the most. Garrus was the only one Shepard relaxed around anymore, laughed with. He was probably the only one Shepard confided in, too.

But Liara and Tali and Wrex. They all had reasons for their absences. Kaidan just…

The trouble with barriers was they were supposed to decay with time. Every biotic knew that. And yet this one stayed firmly in place, wedged between himself and Shepard since Horizon, maybe even before that. And Kaidan didn’t know how to pull it down. Every time he tried, every olive branch he extended, just got torn back when Kaidan found another way to question Shepard’s ethics, his morals, his every decision, a habit he couldn’t drop no matter how much he wanted to—and he did, more than anything. How could a person trust anything from either side of the microscope from which Kaidan had been inspecting Shepard’s every action?

_Why me? Why not Ashley? She might’ve backed you through the Collectors. She might have understood and helped and stayed true to you. You might not have to walk on eggshells around her here now if you’d picked her._

_Maybe you should have picked her_.

“No problem,” Shepard answered, low, delayed enough that Kaidan had a hard time recalling what it was in response to. He sipped his coffee. Tentative, casual, he asked, “How are you holding up?”

Kaidan bit back a sigh. That was the question, wasn’t it? And Kaidan had no good answer for it. Not now. Or rather, he had plenty of answers, but for once he just wanted to keep them locked behind his teeth; they couldn’t damage Shepard from behind that cage. And Kaidan was tired of it, hurting Shepard with his skepticism. He’d done enough of that, hadn’t he? More than enough to make up for the hurt of Horizon. Maybe not enough for the guilt he still felt about Virmire.

But still, Kaidan was exhausted, sick of heart about it. Nothing Shepard could say would make it better. Otherwise it already would have. Every other conversation they shared came back to this and Shepard acquitted himself with reasonable, understandable, _acceptable_ justifications every time. But no degree of trustworthy, reliable responses could stop the doubt from wriggling, insidious, through his thoughts.

This was Kaidan’s shit to deal with. Shepard didn’t deserve having to deal with it, too, not after everything that had happened.

He’d promised Shepard he had his back. _Promised_. And he would, but saying it didn’t quell that part of him that still wondered. On the field, he was as good as his word. It was just the Normandy’s decks that shaded everything in grays.

Shepard leaned across the table toward him, his face tilted up in a bid to catch Kaidan’s attention. A successful bid, as it turned out. Because Kaidan couldn’t help but return Shepard’s look. He’d never been charmed by blue eyes before Shepard. But like the unknown pull of space, here he was now, constantly drawn back to them. That pull was dangerous the same way space was dangerous.

He’d hate Shepard for it if he could.

“Kaidan?”

Suddenly, the table seemed like the most interesting piece of furniture in the galaxy and Kaidan still had no good answer for him. Probably never would. Shepard invited confidences, but Kaidan didn’t have anything worthwhile to confide.

 _Sorry, Shepard. I’ve got nothin’ for you_.

Now it was Shepard who sighed, who scrubbed his hand across his jaw. A thousand different emotions flickered across his face, a surprising number of them recognizable, a few completely inscrutable. Disappointment. Sadness. Regret. Kaidan knew those feelings intimately, but he’d seen them on Shepard’s face a time or two before. It used to be that Shepard would lock them down before they got away from him, immediate and harsh, but whether it was the strain of the war or something else entirely, they stayed put far longer this time than Kaidan would have expected. Made it a hell of a lot easier to catalogue them than Kaidan really wanted. Discomfort wormed its way through him and settled unhappily in his stomach, mingling with the coffee to give him something he chose to call indigestion.

“I’m fine, Shepard,” he answered. “Just—tired.”

Shepard’s brows lifted, half in thought, half in disbelief, but he pursed his lips together for a brief moment and nodded. _Okay, Kaidan,_ he seemed to be saying, _have it your way_. “I could drink to that.”

In the past, Shepard would have prodded more. And in the past, he maybe wouldn’t have _had_ to prod at all. There was a time when Shepard was party to his every thought, his every secret, and Kaidan preferred it that way. That time was a long way past, but Kaidan was almost willing to admit he wanted Shepard to prod and that was something. It counted. It was more than he’d had before when Kaidan wanted to hear nothing Shepard had to say.

Kaidan’s head tipped slightly toward Shepard’s mug. Lifting his own with Shepard following suit, he clinked the ceramic cups together. “Cheers, then.”

Shepard smiled then and it was beautiful the way it used to be when Kaidan wouldn’t let himself think too much about it, back when Saren was still the biggest threat they faced and Shepard and Kaidan were on the same side. It wasn’t a smile Kaidan had seen directed at him in years.

It stole his breath to witness it here and now, the shape of it sending creeping, cracking ice down his spine to freeze him in place. His heart lurched and his pulse fluttered to keep up and the headache he was nursing became the farthest thing from his mind in the face of it. Even Ashley faded to the background like the old, scarred ache she’d become most of the time. For the span of that smile, they were okay. Everything was okay. Horizon and Udina and Cerberus no longer mattered.

It was just him and Shepard and his ability for one brief, relief-filled moment to place his full trust in Shepard again, to know that Shepard worked for all of them and wasn’t just the Illusive Man’s strung-along puppet.

This was how it should be.

This was how it could be.

And Kaidan would do his damnedest to make it that way again. He’d meant what he said about not doubting Shepard again. And though it was hard—every mission that put Cerberus’s depravity on display made it harder—he thought he could do it. For Shepard’s smile, he’d do anything.

No, not anything. That integrity thing, it still mattered. But he could do this.

And next time they had some downtime, he’d show Shepard that.


End file.
